and all the lives we ever lived
by sparkstoaflame
Summary: Collection of Elsanna short stories (well, if you can call them that), which are mostly AU. / [there is no end in sight really] :: [just stuff to be updated on a whim] / [arc one / "While Measuring the Steps to Infinitude"]


**authors' note** | so yeah, i'm co-writing this with **toSempiternity**. you can find this on _ao3_ underneath her penname too; it was agreed I'd update on _ffn_ and she on _ao3._ so there's that.

this particular story was written by **toSempiternity**, while i beta-ed, so there ya go. support her! :D

* * *

**arc one** / While Measuring the Steps to Infinitude

* * *

_The things she carries are the memories of her happiest, darkest, saddest, most enjoyable moments. She carries the knowledge of a lifetime, the wisdom that she has passed on to others. She carries with her the memory of a life lived to the fullest. The things she carries are the only things she wants, because she has everything she needs. With that, she leaves behind a person, a soul, and a life to those around her, who will one day follow her same footsteps and will reach her same final destination._

* * *

**step the zero**

_(or, the prologue)_

/i love these roads where the houses don't change  
where we can talk like there's something to say/

.

She screams at her mother; bawls until tears come, kicks her legs until she gets too tired, and pounds her fists on the table for a piece of chocolate before dinner.

"Just one bar! One!"

"No, honey." Her mother sets down a plate and goes back to the counter for another.

"Moooom!"

There is a long-suffering sigh, "Anna...no chocolate before dinner. That's the rule."

Anna turns hopefully to her elder siblings.

Kristoff rolls his eyes at her — "Stop acting like a baby, carrot-top" — and then makes a face, crudely mimicking Anna's pout. Anna pouts some more and twists around to smile up at Elsa. Elsa, with the soft white-blonde hair and crystalline blue eyes, Elsa who loved winter like no one else Anna had ever met, Elsa who was always there for Anna no matter what: her cobalt gaze flutters upward, briefly, to meet Anna's own hopeful teal one, before she shakes her platinum-blonde head almost imperceptibly and sticks her nose deeper into her book.

Anna cries when Mother says the dreaded word again: "No." She continues to scream until Mother finally loses her composure. Mother starts screaming and tells her to go upstairs to her room. She scowls at her and storms out.

The things she carries are the few necessities she cannot live without. Her blue teddy bear, with its one flailing, broken arm, its one beady black eye, and its tufts of cotton poking through its stomach. A fistful of Hershey's Kisses, silver wrappings glinting dully in the dim light. She finds four dollars at the bottom of her piggy bank and packs them in her red Winnie the Pooh backpack. She swings the backpack over her shoulder, holds her teddy bear tightly, and runs out of the house.

From the table, Kristoff is completely oblivious to the melodrama playing out right underneath his nose, while their parents look at each other, eyebrows furrowed.

"She'll come back," Idun says, a hint of doubt entering her still-irritated voice.

"She's five, Idun," Agdar frowns, moving to grab his jacket. He is instead stopped by his middle child, by Elsa; she sets down her book, excuses herself, and Kristoff glances up at the sound of crinkling noises emerging from the pantry. Elsa then bolts out the door as fast as her nine-year-old legs can carry her.

The blonde sees Anna barely two houses down, sitting on the curb and cuddling her teddy bear, and Elsa feels a pang running through her because this is the toy that she had picked out for Anna when the redhead had been first born.

"Elsa?" Anna says, in a small voice, still clutching the teddy bear close to her chest.

Elsa hesitates, looking around the quiet suburban neighborhood as if scared that the two of them will be kidnapped, then holds out her hand, upon which a treasure more valuable than gold rests.

Anna giggles, "I've got chocolate already, Elsa."

Elsa notes the open Winnie the Pooh backpack and the abundance of silver wrappers lying next to Anna; then she concedes, "Fair point." She offers her right hand, the one unoccupied with clutching sweets, for Anna to grab. And then they walk, down the concrete sidewalk underneath the ruddy glow of the setting sun.

They go another three houses down before Anna gets too tired and Elsa smiles and half-carries her back home.

* * *

(**tbc**)

_with the following —_

— **step the first**

_wherein there are locked doors and new_ arrangements —

— **step the second**

_wherein your sister is apparently sorry for loving you too much and you're apparently older and more mature and fucking _ice —

— **step the third**

_wherein there's some more active disassociation and some more screaming_ and —

— **step the fourth**

_wherein it's time for you to enter the real world now and your sister's made a real big name for herself_ in —

— **step the fifth**

_wherein your our journey comes to an end_


End file.
